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Environmental Policy Studies: Information Resources

Resources marked with this symbol are restricted to Columbia affiliates.

Find Books

  • CLIO: Columbia Libraries Online Catalog
    CLIO is the online catalog for the Columbia and Barnard libraries. It includes over 4 million records for books, journal or newspaper titles (not articles), online resources, government documents, microforms, sound or video recordings, archival collections, etc.
  • Pegasus: Columbia University Law School Library Online Catalog
    Pegasus includes: U.S. federal and state law, selected Commonwealth jurisdictions, major foreign language collections and, since 1983, vernacular and Western language materials pertaining to law in Japan and the People's Rep. of China.
  • WorldCat
    An online catalog of the collections of 24,000 member libraries of the OCLC consortium, comprising more than 36 million records for books, serials, manuscript collections, audiovisual materials, computer files, and other media.
  • Borrow Direct
    A borrowing service offered by the university libraries of Columbia, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale. It is designed to allow students, faculty and staff to request (and receive in four days) books directly from each other's collections.

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Background Information

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Find Journal Articles

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Primary Source Documents

  • The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920
    A website from the Library of Congress which links to primary documents from the Library's collection, documenting the development of the conservation in the U.S.
  • U.S. Environmental Protection Legislation:
    • Thomas
      Search Thomas for legislation (bills and Public Laws) from the 93rd Congress to the present.
    • Climate Change Impacts on the United States National Assessment Project
      The National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change is a landmark in the major ongoing effort to understand what climate change means for the United States. The Assessment was called for by a 1990 law, and has been conducted under the US Global Change Research Program in response to a request from the President's Science Advisor. This site contains the final approved version of the report of the National Assessment Synthesis Team, which was a federal advisory committee made up of experts drawn from government, universities, industry, and non-governmental organizations.
    • ECOLEX: a Gateway to Environmental Law
      ECOLEX is joint project of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and IUCN -- The World Conservation Union. It consists of seven different databases with links to full text laws and court decisions.
    • Environmental Treaties and Resource Indicators (ENTRI)
      You can search the ENTRI relational database via a set of basic questions pertaining to international environmental agreements.
    • EPA Laws and Regulations
      Access to specific regulations and legislation pertaining to environmental protection, from the EPA
    • LexisNexis Congressional
      LexisNexis Congressional provides indexing, abstracts and legislative histories for all Congressional publications, back to 1970. You can also search the full text of bills, laws, testimony, documents, and reports, some as far back as 1988.
    • NEPAnet: National Environmental Policy Act, with full text of the act, related governmental web sites, and environmental regulation
    • National Library for the Environment
      The Library presently consists of fulltext files of over 1200 short Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports on environmental issues.
    • Trade and Environment Database (TED)
      From American University; TED is a collection of over 600 trade and environment case studies. Each case is coded on 28 different criteria and accompanied by a written report.
    • United Nations Treaty Collection
    • Urban Environmental Management Documents
      Consists of general documents from a variety of sources, bibliographies, newsletters, and country specific documents.
    • World Court Digest
      The World Court Digest represents a reproduction, in a systematic arrangement, of the views on questions of international law which are expressed in the judgements, advisory opinions and orders of the International Court of Justice as well as in the separate opinions of individual judges. Environmental law is well represented.

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Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs)

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Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs)

  • CIAO: Columbia International Affairs Online
    Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) is designed to be the most comprehensive source for theory and research in international affairs. It publishes a wide range of scholarship from 1991 on that includes working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, and proceedings from conferences.
  • Cato Institute: Energy and Environment
    Cato's energy and environment studies are devoted to explaining how energy markets work and promoting policies that leave questions regarding energy consumption, environmental standards, market structure, and technology to the market rather than government planners. Cato is committed to protecting the environment without sacrificing economic liberty, and believes that those goals are mutually supporting, not mutually exclusive.
  • The Center for Energy and Environmental Studies (CEES)
    The Center for Energy and Environmental Studies coordinates Boston University's education, research, and professional training in the fields of energy and environmental analysis. The perspective of the Center is multi-disciplinary and problem-oriented.
  • Central European Environmental Data Request Facility (CEDAR)
    CEDAR, in cooperation with the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) in Budapest, Hungary, provides computing and Internetwork facilities to support international data exchange with the Central and Eastern European environmental community.
  • Commission for Environmental Cooperation
    The CEC facilitates cooperation and public participation to foster conservation, protection and enhancement of the North American environment for the benefit of present and future generations, in the context of increasing economic, trade and social links between Canada, Mexico and the United States. A wide range for full text publications are available on the site.
  • Conservation International
    Conservation International (CI) is a field-based, non-profit organization that protects the Earth's biologically richest areas and helps the people who live there improve their quality of life. CI uses science, economics, policy, and community involvement to promote biodiversity conservation in tropical rain forests and other endangered ecosystems worldwide.
  • Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)
    An NGO site (located at Columbia's Lamonty-Doherty campus) with extensive access to demographic and environmental data.
  • The Earth Council Alliance
    Earth Council Alliance (ECA) supports Earth Councils and other people and organizations committed to sustainability initiatives and preserving the world for today’s peoples and future generations. ECA supports autonomous Earth Councils founded during the last decade in with the goal of accelerating progress in achieving sustainability goals as they are framed in the Earth Charter, Agenda 21, and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
  • Environmental Change and Security Project (ECSP), at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
    As hard security threats dominate the headlines, ECSP works hard to foster a broader, nonpartisan debate. We shatter the boundaries separating environment, population, and security, and reveal the links that connect our natural resources—air, water, land, forests—to conflict and cooperation.
  • Future Generations
    An international non-governmental organization (NGO) working for an environmentally sustainable future. Currently, its major program focus is on Asia, and in particular the Tibet Autonomous Region of China.
  • Global Footprint Network
    In 2003, Global Footprint Network was established to enable a sustainable future where all people have the opportunity to live satisfying lives within the means of one planet. An essential step in creating a one-planet future is measuring human impact on the Earth so we can make more informed choices.
  • International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria
    The IIASA is an international research institute established in 1972 by the USA and the Soviet Union as a center for objective, joint East-West study of problems common to modern societies. East-West collaboration remains an important part of IIASA's work, but with the end of the Cold War the emphasis has shifted to the scientific study of global change, in particular the policy aspects of environmental, economic, and technological processes of change.
  • International Institute for Energy Conservation
    IIEC was established to foster the implementation of energy efficiency in developing countries and countries in transition. IIEC’ s approach focuses on implementation, resulting in policies developed in partnership with key policymakers and industry in our target countries as well as the bilateral and multilateral institutions that help to shape energy policy and investment priorities globally.
  • International Institute for Environment and Development
    At a time when swift change is the norm, IIED finds solutions to the shifting array of challenges by focusing on five big issues: Climate Change, Governance, Human Settlements, Natural Resources and Sustainable Markets.
  • International Institute for Sustainable Development
    Provides Linkages: a Multimedia Resource for Environment & Development Policy Makers
  • Pew Center on Global Climate Change
    The Pew Center on Global Climate Change provides a forum for objective research and analysis and for the development of pragmatic policies and solutions.
  • The Population-Environment Research Network
    The Population-Environment Research Network seeks to advance academic research on population and the environment by promoting on-line scientific exchange among researchers from social and natural science disciplines worldwide. It sponsors a research database and a cyber seminar series.
  • Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
    PIK addresses crucial scientific questions in the fields of global change, climate impacts and sustainable development. Researchers from the natural and social sciences work together to generate interdisciplinary insights and to provide society with sound information for decision making. The main methodologies are systems and scenarios analysis, modelling, computer simulation, and data integration.
  • Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe
    The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) is a non-advocacy, not-for-profit organisation with the mission to assist in solving environmental problems in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The Center fulfils its mission through encouraging cooperation among non-governmental organisations, governments and businesses, supporting the free exchange of information and promoting public participation in environmental decision-making.
  • Resource Renewal Institute
  • Resources for the Future
  • Stanford University Program on Energy and Sustainable Development
    The Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) is an international, interdisciplinary program that draws on the fields of economics, political science, law, and management to investigate how the production and consumption of energy affect human welfare and environmental quality.
  • The Virtual Library on Urban Environmental Management
    The library is essentially a grouping of urban planning researchers spread all around the world. It uses the internet as a means of communication and exchange of information, and a homepage to 'package' the collected information in a presentable way.
  • World Conservation Union (IUCN)
  • World Resources Institute
    The World Resources Institute is an independent center for policy research and technical assistance on global environmental and development issues. The site is rich with full text publications, data, and links.
  • World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
  • Worldwatch Institute
    The Worldwatch Institute is an independent research organization recognized by opinion leaders around the world for its accessible, fact-based analysis of critical global issues. The Institute's three main program areas include Climate & Energy, Food & Agriculture, and the Green Economy.

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U.S. Government Agencies

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